Boba tier list

Annual work update… I can’t say anything about this, or all the other stuff I did this year. But some stuff I was working on at Quantinuum got published too: arXiv link.

My family and I went to Taiwan in March, and it was great! Though… I didn’t drink as much boba as I would’ve liked, since we spent most of the time outside the big cities. So after I came back, I overcompensated and made a boba tier list out of it.

Some notes:

• Hey Tea (TBD tier) is probably A or S tier but I haven’t had the milk tea to compare.
• I left off some places I went to once in Taiwan: Chun Shui Tang, 50Lan, Truedan, Milksha, and Macu. Milksha was probably the best (A) and Macu the worst (D), but with only one visit I don’t think it’s fair to judge them.
• Not ranking a lot of one-off local boba shops cause they’re usually not nearly as good as the chains.

More deets:

• Chicha San Chen (S): They brew tea using an espresso machine and it works! Dong Ding Oolong or Green Tea with Cream are amazing, other stuff is okay to bad
• Odd One Out (S): Icy Peak Milk Tea (Dong Ding) is just barely worse than Chicha’s. Interesting toppings

• Prince Tea House (S): Fancy high tea-like place in NY. Only went once

• Brian Black Tea (A): Specializes in black teas, really like Era or Retro Milk Tea
• Xing Fu Tang (A): Stir-fried boba in sugar in a wok. Tea is okay but boba is good (sweet)
• Wow Tea Drink (A): Cupertino store that’s Chicha lite, also with teaspesso machines

• Mr. Sun Tea (A): Homemade fruit boba. Also non-alcoholic Heineken + green tea lol

• Teaspoon (B): The grasshopper is really refreshing

• Half and Half Good Old Time (B): Boba priced like it’s 1990, and pretty good

• Boba Ave 8090 (C):
• Tiger Sugar (C): Big and small boba
• Kung Fu Tea (C): This is my benchmark for boba

• Latea (C): I went here every day for a week at UIUC. Then I drank some moldy tea and it was all over

• Dingle Berries (D): 626 store with edgy drink names and interesting flavors. I used to have their Rosemead location as S tier in 2018 but 8/2024 tasted just super sweet, D tier. I think they closed down in 2024
• Boba Guys (D): This is shit